KHAPS VIEW AND GENETICS

Posted by dahiyars in Uncategorized on May 27, 2012

Khaps view and Genetics
B ACKGROUND:

These days genetics comes quite handy for the khap supporters to demand ban on the same gotra marriage by amending the Hindu Marriage Act. Many khap elders can be seen these days talking like experts on genetics. They argue that any kind of sexual relation between two sexes in a particular khap is rightly treated as incest as the offspring of such an alliance would have genetic disorders. The khap lineage implies flowing of the same blood in the veins of the khap descendents and purity of blood must be maintained by avoiding cohabitation between male and female members of the khap concerned. Thus, the serious science of khap has been reduced to the level of the banal. It looks quite farcical when critics of the khap functioning are accused of promoting marriage between brother and sister.

Genetics is a science of heredity or inheritance. “ The science of genetics tells us the exact possibilities of common heredity between consanguineal relatives of each degree. A person can be expected, on the average, exactly half of the hereditary factors or genes of any consanguineal relative. He inherits half of those possessed by his father and half of those carried by his mother. He transmits approximately half of his own to each son or daughter. With each brother and sister (except identical twins) he is likely to share fifty per cent of the half inherited from the father plus fifty per cent of the half inherited from the mother, or half of the total heredity of the sibling”. Human cells contain 23 pairs of chromosomes( long, stringy aggregates of genes that carry heredity information) for a total of 46. When a child is conceived, male and female contribute half the chromosomes each.

PATRIARCH SOCIETY AND CONCEPT OF GOTRA :

However, in a male dominated society child’s gotra is known after the father and mother’s contribution is ignored. In a patriarchal set up, even the role of a female in biological function
on which humans have no control, is not taken note of. To quote a scientist: “ Gotra is known after the male only. When a man marries a woman, the offspring would inherit half the blood from each of the parents. Marriage in the next generation takes place in the third gotra leading to mixing of blood of one more gotra. In this situation, the initial blood of mother and father remains only 25 per cent. In the succeeding generations this is reduced to about 5 per cent. ……In this way there is little possibility of genetic disorder in the same gotra marriage…..From scientific point of view, it can be stated that gotra is a social identity marker and not a genetic entity”. (free translation from Hindi). The khap votaries treat the genetic code as something static and frozen as if it travels from one generation to another in its pristine purity. It seems, taking their argument seriously, that nature keeps the seed of a male ancestor in a sort of bank vault from where it is injected automatically in the descendents from generation to generation for thousands of years and the purity of blood is maintained automatically. Any body who contravenes this eternal law of nature by having sexual relation with a member of the same family line which enlarges with a passage of time to envelop a number of villages in the form of a khap, commits incest and must be punished for committing the sin. This is nothing but a caricature of a serious and complex science of genetics. Inheritance of genes is hereditary.

NOTHING IS ABSOLUTE BUT CHANGING EVEN GENETICS

Richard Dawkins, a well known genetist, is of the view that our genes are doled out to us at conception, and there is nothing that we can do about this. Dawkins, who has been accused of genetics determinism, also admits the role of culture in life. “ Most of what is unusual about man can be summed up in one word ‘culture’……Cultural transmission is analogous to genetic
transmission in that, although basically conservative, it can give rise to a form of evolution”. Thus besides, genes, factors like culture, environment, climate and a host of social factors play significant role in life. “ Environmental factors are presumed to be involved in the development of aggressiveness…..Unfavourable social conditions such as frustration in personal accomplishment and taunting from associates may encourage physical aggression as a means of adaptation”. “ Furthermore, behavioral characteristics of an animal develop under the joint tightly entwined effects of heredity and environment…..Environmental factors are interwoven with inheritance mechanisms at every point in development”. Thus, a host of environmental and social factors have a significant role in life and they may induce affect genes also. Even one’s actions may have a role. “ The genes can be induced to change by,voluntary, free-willed, conscious action”. . “The biological and socioecological are mutually inextricably entangled. Consequently. our fate is neither written in the stars nor in our genes, for we are active participants of the evolutionary drama”. Thus, the khap ideologues’ notion of genetic code being a fixed entity traversing from generation to generation is a fiction as research in the field of genetics shows. Their idea of incest relating to common lineage, if taken back indefinitely in the past, leads to the conclusion that whole of mankind is linked with common genealogy and any kind of marital relation is incestuous as homo sapiens, as search in genetics shows, are derived from a common family tree somewhere in Africa. According to a new research, modern humans may have interbred with a now extinct lineage of humanity before leaving Africa 65,000 years ago after the emergence of modern humans 200,000 years ago.

CONCEPT OF PURITY OF BLOOD OF A GOTRA IS A MYTH:

Offspring known by the gotra of their male parent is illogical from the viewpoint of genetics as female parent too makes an equal contribution. If a male with Gotra A married a girl with gotra B, their son will have AB gotra. After he marries a female with Gotra C after avoiding the gotra of parents, his progeny would have gotra ABC along with gotra of his wife’s mother and so on. A senior medico and a civil engineer have done an elaborate joint exercise on this which is quite enlightening. They takes us two hundred years back. Let us assume that one boy named Bhim Boora married a girl Chandro Hooda and they were blessed with a son Sarju. He should be known as Sarju Boora Hooda. At the same juncture of time there was one Lal Chand Punia who married Rajo Sheoran and the couple was blessed with girl named Ramkali. She, by gotra, is Ramkali Punia Sheoran. In the Course of time (say after 25 years ) Sarju Boora-Hooda got married to Ramkai Punia-Sheoran and they gave birth to a daughter named Sita, who, by gotra, was Sita Boora-Hooda-Punia-Sheoran. In the same period one young man of Sangwan gotra married one young woman of Dahiya gotra and gave birth to a daughter named Bimla with gotra Sangwan-Dahiya and on attaining proper age married a young man Harpal Malik-Jakhar. The couple gave birth to a male child named Rajmal who, by gottra, was Rajmal Sangwan-Dahiya-Malik-Jakhar. After another 25 years Sita Boora-Hooda-Punia-Sheoran got married to Rajmal Sangwan-Dahiya-Malik-Jakhar and gave birth to a daughter named Khajani who, by gotra, was Khajani Boora-Hooda-Punia-Sheoran-Sangwan-Dahiya-Malik-Jakhar. Around the same period of time there was one male child born to other parents with different grant parents and different great grand parents and was, by gotra, Harphool Rana-Fogat-Gahot-Kadian-Nain-Lohan-Jaglan. Khajani and Harphool were married and gave birth to sons and daughters. What will be the gotra of their offspring? It will be inordinately long. Their surname will be Rana-Fogat-Deswal-Gahlot-Kadian-Nain-Lohan-Jaglan-Boora-Hooda-Punia-Sheoran-Sangwan-Dahiya-Malik-Jakhar.Thus, the third generation children will have 16 surnames if we have to go by the laws of genetics. Summarising, by blood the first patriarch/matriarch must have had blood mix of at least two gotra; one gotra from his /her father and another from his/her mother. The next generation, say after 25 years, will have blood mix of four gotra, the third generation, say after 50 years from the start, will have blood mix of eight gotra, 16 gotras after 75 years, 32 gotras after 100 years, 64 gotras after 125 years and 128 gotras after 150 years, 256 gotras after 175 years and 512 gotras after 200 years from the start. 1024 gotras after 225 years and 2048 gotras after 250 years and 4096 gotras after 275 years and 8192 after 300 years .Thus, a Jat (or any community )must have the blood of hundreds of gotras running into his/her veins centuries after the community came into existence. There has been so much of inter mixing that to talk of purity of blood of any gotra anywhere in the world these days is irrational and unscientific. In ancient times a number of ethnic groups came into Haryana region- Greeks, Shakas, Scythians, Parthians, Huns, Kushans etc. Some of them settled here. In medieval times it was a gateway to Agra and Delhi for a variety of foreign invaders and they must have mixed up with the local population. In this backdrop purity of blood for any community is a fiction. Jats of Haryana and their counterparts in Punjab come from the same ethnic stock and they have many common gotras. Sikh Jats are more liberal on account of the emancipatory ethos of Sikh gurus
and several reform movements.

SAME GOTRA MARRIAGES IN SIKHS:

There are instances of same gotra marriage in case of some large gotras like Virk, Dihlllon, Grewal, Chahal etc. Most glaring is the marital relationship between two leading Jat political families of Punjab- Pratap Singh Kairon and Prakash Singh Badal ( Kairon’s grand son married Badal’s daughter) while they both have Dhillon gotra. There is no report of any genetic infirmity in case of their children.
SAME GOTRA MARRIAGE IS NOT THE ISSUE ( Majority 72% honour killing cases are inter caste marriages and only 3 % same gotra marriages)

Khap leaders now invoke science in their advocacy for a ban on intra-gotra marriages. However, there is no scientific basis of their demand as gotra is a social construct. The Hindu Marriagiage Act bans marriage on grounds of Sapindas, unless permitted by custom. Sapinda refers to the third generation of ascendants on the mother’s side and fifth on the father’s side and bans marriage between two persons if one is a descendants of the other within these limits. In many parts of the country, especially in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, marriage between first cousin is quite common. According to Dr. Satyajit Rath, a scientist at the institute of Immunology, New Delhi, there are strong societal and cultural reasons to ban such marriages but it has no basis in science . Gotra, asserts Dr. Rath, is no science at all. Khap zealots has created so much of din on their demand of ban on same gotra marriage as if this kind of marriage is mushrooming in society and thus has become a serious social problem. Far from it. The study commissioned by the National Commission for Women found that 72 % out of the 326 cases of honour crimes surveyed related to inter caste marriages while the same gotra marriages accounted for only 3 % . Marriages within the caste were 15 % while only1 % were inter-religious marriages.

LESSONS TO BE DRAWN:

Khap ideologues accuse those who disagree with them of standing for the same-gotra marriage, stretching it to the argument that they would like to promote marriage between brother and sister. This is canard, pure and simple, and has no basis in reality. They, including this writer, have always conceded that khap people have democratic right to demand ban on same-gotra marriage peacefully by amending the Hindu Marriage Act but they should relax other restrictions which have become impractical in modern age. However, if some one happens to violate these norms, there should be no killing and persecution of the family concerned. Moreover, same-gotra marriage is not such a big problem as it is made out to be, more so in Haryana. There has been only such case relating to Manoj-Babli of Kaithal district. So many other cases relate to marital alliance between boys and girls with different gotras, different villages and different khaps. Still they became targets of the caste panchayat fury on account of some violation of a plethora of marital taboos. Khap leaders should change their world view in tune with the changing times and concentrate on larger social issues like the crisis in agriculture, mounting corruption, galloping inflation, growing unemployment feoticide and such other problems if they wish to acquire legitimacy in society.

There is no clinical material of same gotra marriage in Jats on which any study can be based .

However there are three basic questions regarding khaps views on genetics and same gotra marriages.

Is “Pure Gotra “concept is only a socio-cultural identity depicting the purity of a particular Gotra Say Dahiya? Does this concept have any scientific bases?
Can we equate first cousin marriage and same gotra marriages .?
What is community based genetics ? What are its implications if we continue marriages in the same community?

As far as my limited knowledge is there ,I put things as below:

“Pure Gotra” concept does not have scientific base as any Gotra blood is not a pure gotra blood . But it is a mixture of so many gotras.
First cousin marriages and same gotra marriages cannot be equated and hence the genetic implications as well
As far as the congenital defects increasing danger is concerned , chances of its increase within the same community are there. I am quoting Mr. A.H. Bittles article lines :

“ The mutations that occurred over 100 generations ago may may conceivably be found in all Hindu cultures, where as those of more recent origin probably have restricted distribution and may be unique to specific subcastes. The smaller the community, the greater the probability that founder effect and the genetic drift will exert a significant influence on the distribution patterns of specific mutations. Therefore even in the absence of preferential consanguineous marriage genetic isolation of ten results in an increased frequency of community specific genetic diseases .

This fact is commonly overlooked with the consequent general assumption that where an autosomal recessive disease is present in a family or community , at high frequency consanguinity is necessarily implicated.

(A.H.Bittles. Journal of Genetics Vol. 81. No. 3 December 2002-91-98)

So if we are really serious on congenital defects among jats, then the answer is to promote intercaste marriages rather than within jat community marriages.

Same-gotra marriage legal, court had ruled 65 years ago

Posted by dahiyars in KHAPS on April 16, 2012

Same-gotra marriage legal, court had ruled 65 years ago

TNN May 15, 2010, 03.00am IST

NEW DELHI: The sustained effort by aggressive khap panchayats and their influential political backers to force leading political parties to have a rethink on same gotra marriages is patently illegal. Sixty-five years ago, in 1945, the issue was settled by the Bombay High Court which categorically declared same gotra marriages were legal. And that’s been the law of the land since.

In wake of the khap panchayat’s defiance of the law, not only have top politicians like Om Prakash Chautala and Naveen Jindal caved in – no doubt to retain the political support of these medieval organisations – but national parties like BJP, too, have been wavering. The BJP on Thursday talked about building a “consensus” on the issue, indicating there was scope for modifying the legal view on same-gotra marriages. Even the Congress is said to be keeping its cards close to the chest.

So, even as khaps spit fire at courts for holding such marriages legal, it is instructive to learn about the rigour with which two reputed judges went into the issue in 1945, much before Hindu personal law was codified. They consulted the writings of leading experts and delved into the wisdom of the Hindu scriptures to arrive at their verdict.

The case, ‘Madhavrao vs Raghavendrarao’, involved a Deshastha Brahmin couple and the two-judge bench comprised Harilal Kania, the first chief justice of independent India, and P B Gajendragadkar, who became CJI in the 1960s.

The essence of the case was whether ‘sagotra’ marriage or marriage within the same gotra was valid under Hindu custom.

The court initially relied on a landmark 1868 case where the Privy Council had stated, “under the Hindu system of law, clear proof of usage will outweigh the written text of the law”. However, a custom, which was at variance with the written text of Hindu law, had to be ancient, certain and reasonable if it was to be recognised by the court.

After going over several court rulings on the evidence to prove a custom, the bench concluded that the marriage in question between a husband and wife belonging to same gotra was valid. This argument could, however, be turned around by the khaps of Haryana to say that it is customary for Jats not to marry within the same gotra.

But, the court anticipated this sort of an argument and garnered textual proof for intra-gotra marriage. German scholar Max Mueller had defined ‘gotras’ as descending from eight sages and then branching out to severalfamilies.

The Court, however, referred to eminent scholar P V Kane, author of the ‘History of Dharmashastra’, who had said:

“The mass of material on ‘gotra’ and ‘pravara’ in the sutras, the puranas and digests is so vast and full of contradictions that it is almost an impossible task to reduce it to order and coherence.”

On this ground, the court concluded that it was impossible to accept the suggestion that in reference to the Brahmin families of today, their gotras and pravaras represent anything like an unbroken line of descent from the common ancestors indicated by the names of their respective gotras and pravaras. After consulting the texts of Manu and Yajnavalkya, the court observed that the requirements on gotra were recommendatory, rather than mandatory.

Finally, the court stressed on the need of Hindu society and law to keep up with the times. It said, “Courts have to construe the texts of Hindu law in the light of the explanations given by recognised commentators. But it must always be remembered that since the said commentaries were written, several centuries have passed by and during this long period the Hindu mode of life has not remained still or static. Notions of good social behaviour and the general ideology of the Hindu society have been changing. The custom as to marriages between persons of the same gotra in this case is an eloquent instance in point.”

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-05-15/india/28311339_1_gotra-khap-marriage